into the death had seemed interested only in dismissing it from his mind. After he had had the contents of her mother’s wine cellar conveyed to his own house, Ariel thought bitterly. When she had gone to ask for his help, he had been thoroughly foxed at eleven in the morning. Her mother’s solicitor had been no more encouraging. He had suggested that she think of the future rather than the past, and had given her the one piece of good news she had received in London. Her mother had left her enough money to live on, if she was careful.
“How did she manage it?” Ariel asked the cat. “She always spent every penny she had. I remember the bill collectors pounding on the door, and Bess sending a footman running out the back way to borrow the money to pay them.”
She rose and went back up to the parlor to await Lord Alan. But as soon as she sat down, the silence of the place dropped over her like a heavy blanket. It was a little unnerving, staying here by herself. She had never lived alone. And these were certainly not the best circumstances for trying it out. Memories of her mother became uncomfortably vivid in the dense quiet. When she had heard of the haunting at Carlton House, she had almost…
Ariel shook her head sharply. She would hire new servants, she thought. She was not entirely sure how one went about this, but it could not be too difficult. And more important, she would find the truth. That would put everything to rest. She had an ally now; she was no longer totally alone. She was managing perfectly well.
Hoofbeats sounded in the street. Ariel listened, but they clattered on by. A board creaked upstairs. Of course, Bess would not at all approve of her agreement with Lord Alan, Ariel thought, or of his visit here today. Though men were a great part of Bess Harding’s life, she had not trusted any of them, particularly not where Ariel was concerned.
Ariel clenched her fists. Just when she’d been insisting upon coming home from school permanently, her mother had ended her life in that horrifyingly bloody way. Whenever she allowed herself to think of it, she was overwhelmed by grief and incomprehension and anger. How could Bess have done it? How could she have left her in this awful way? And even more critically—why? Ariel caught her lower lip between her teeth. That question lay behind her every thought now, and everything she did. Why had Bess done it? Ariel was obsessed with finding an answer. She had to find it, she thought, if she was ever to have peace again.
Something touched her ankle. Ariel started, then saw that the cat had rejoined her. He sat at her feet, staring up. When she met his steady golden gaze, he blinked once, then began to groom his thick fur.
Ariel watched his quick efficient movements. The cat had appeared on her second day alone in the house. She still didn’t know whether he actually belonged here, but he looked nothing like the half-starved street cats one saw in the city. He had some secret entry of his own; he appeared and disappeared at will, vanishing like the smoke he resembled. She’d named him Prospero, because he was majestic and magical, and because it reminded her of her own eccentric naming.
“Were you here when she did it?” Ariel asked him. “Did she speak to you as I do?”
Prospero’s tongue rasped between the toes of his front paw. Fastidiously, he bit at one curved claw.
“If only you could tell me,” said Ariel. Her breath caught on a sob, and she repressed it almost savagely. She had decided on the long, long journey back to London that she was not going to give in to grief. She meant to act, and to find comfort in discovering the truth. “With Lord Alan’s help, I’ll be able to do it,” she told herself. “Bess always said that to accomplish anything you must have powerful friends.”
She looked up to find the cat staring fixedly at her. “Lord Alan and I have a business arrangement,” she told the animal. “We are to exchange information and absolutely nothing more.”
It seemed that Prospero’s golden eyes narrowed.
“It’s true,” insisted Ariel. “He is a man of science.”
Delicately, dispassionately, Prospero yawned, showing a ribbed pink mouth and a flash of small white fangs.
* * *
When the knocker sounded against the wood of the front door